Entertainment Review

Split

It may be time to stop expecting genius from M. Night Shyamalan and accept that, in another era, he might have been an in-demand director of watchably-campy B-movie suspense.

After overreaching with sci-fi and bizarre plots about evil breezes and such, Shyamalan’s plain-Jane thriller Split has the feel of a director finally, firmly in his comfort zone. He’s not trying anything new, but does it all well.

He wraps this assured competency around the kind of performance no actor in the world would turn down. Split, as the title implies (and as the trailers make abundantly clear) is about a “villain” with a case of multiple personality disorder.

James McAvoy, who reportedly took the role on short notice, seems as if he’d been preparing for a year for the role of Kevin, a man with at least 23 personalities – most of which he gets to play with scene-chewing aplomb.

Though Split is a bit long for its spare plot, it gets down to business impressively fast, with a teen birthday party and the abduction-by-knockout-drug of three young women – birthday girl Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), her best friend Marcia (Jessica Sula) and “bad girl” Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy of The Witch).

Casey, the outsider, is the one who wasn’t even supposed to be there. And as the drugs wear off to the dream-like reality of their captivity, in the concrete bowels of we-know-not-where, she’s the one whose traumatic childhood we experience in flashback.

As such, Claire and Marcia seem almost extraneous, vessels of fear, continuously waiting for the reappearance of their captor – each time with a new personality, including a playful-but-scared nine-year-old Kanye West fan named Hedwig, a prim, vindictive woman named Miss Patricia, a fashionista named Barry, and a sadistic schemer named Dennis.

And hovering at the back of Kevin’s mind is a possible 24th, a character ominously known only as The Beast.

The premise is admirably lurid. And given that the movie offers intimations of all sorts of depravity, up to and including cannibalism, it’s worth noting that this is a Blumhouse Production, a company that prides itself on non-gory jump-out-at-you horror.

Which means Split is all about atmosphere and build-up, which Shyamalan renders suitably claustrophobic when the movie is in dungeon mode.

Much of it, however, takes place frustratingly in the office of Kevin’s psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley). For someone who’s made Kevin her life’s work, Dr. Fletcher is gobsmackingly clueless about what he’s capable of (especially given that one personality keeps trying to tell her what the others are doing). Rest assured, nothing good comes from this kind of denial.

Shyamalan’s dialogue is sometimes cheesy to the point of audience laughter, though I’m not sure whether this is intentional or not. And the wait for The Beast, once we know he’s coming, eventually wears thin.

But that last act is worth the wait – including, as it does, one of Shyamalan’s little trademark twists.